In MBA school in my mid-fifties, some of what I learned was just attaching bigger words to stuff I already knew from experience. Others, such as the three-legged stool lesson taught by Jay Barney in Organizational Architecture class planted fundamental lessons that will never leave me.

Editors note. This song by Bob Dylan was first released on The Band's first album Big Pink and has been covered by many since then. My love for it comes from listening to my son Kevin cover it at some of his gigs over the years. Enjoy a great roots rock song.

Editor’s note: I’m a little skittish about self-help books anymore, especially from an associate of “Dr. Oz” and so before reading “Wise Mind Living,” Dr. Olivo’s 200 page advice to moody people like me, I tried this little 19 pager to see what she’s like.  Everything here is known and has been written before elsewhere, as I’d suspected but it really was helpful to me to see how Olivo suggests I process my emotions, including my triggers and the after effects of the eight key areas she accounts for – six negative and two positive.  My twenty years of mindfulness practice keeps me noticing my emotions more but it will be pretty interesting to see if understanding the process helps me “name the emotion” before I let it go.  

Editor’s note: Simply the best article I’ve ever read about God.

The first step to creating a more effective organization is determining how to deploy your resources. There are no exceptions. Consider the following:

Editors Note: My still-dear friend, John Zingg, and I played and sang this song (and many others) for spending cash in college and so it has always had a special place in my heart. But it became more when I learned recently that McCartney actually wrote it as a metaphor for the African-American struggle that was gaining ground at the time he wrote this in the late 1960s. The words now make the simple, lovely guitar even more beautiful.

Editor's Note: Drawing on the entrepreneurial life-lessons he gained from his Uncle Cleve, Who Owns the Icehouse? chronicles Clifton Taulbert’s journey from life in the Mississippi Delta at the height of legal segregation to being recognized by Time Magazine as “one of our nations most outstanding emerging entrepreneurs.” While Taulbert describes the life-changing influence of his Uncle Cleve, Gary Schoeniger, founder of Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI), captures the entrepreneurial life-lessons and the unlimited opportunities they can provide.

Editor’s note: While this article appears to be an advertisement for hiring a business coach, its point is too good to pass up. The five reasons CEOs avoid coaching are the five reasons all of us do. I’ve seen this over and over in the leaders I work with and, sadly from time to time in myself.

It was 1988 and I was out of a job. And I was running out of time to provide for my young family of five. When I told people I’m opening a consulting company named Contract Marketing most responses were “great, just what the world needs – another out of work guy posing as a consultant.”

Editor’s Note: Given the racial tensions building in our cities between imperfect police forces and imperfect legal systems, I noticed this, one of my favorite old blues songs on my iPhone the other day. This early 2000’s version of an old Ray Charles tune says it all.